Two men have admitted to randomly placing five severed rabbit heads in residential mailboxes on Easter morning in what amounts to some kind of bizarre and misguided prank, police said.

Capt. Michael McCabe, speaking late Friday morning, said the two men have not been arrested. He declined to release their names, but said they are a 26-year-old Chicopee man and a 24-year-old Springfield man.

Police said the men found the rabbits, which were wild and not domesticated, dead along the sides of various roads in Southwick. McCabe said they thought it would be funny to cut off their heads and place them in the mailboxes.

“They became known to police through investigation,” McCabe said, adding that police were still weighing their options on potential charges.

One of the suspects delivered copies of The Republican newspaper - while working for an independent distributor - on a route that took him through Westfield, Southwick and Granville. That suspect was fired by the independent distributor after the incident came to light.

The second suspect did not work for the distributor and he apparently accompanied the first suspect on his route.

Police said the two men found the dead rabbits some time between April 14 and 16 while on the route.

They took the dead rabbits to the Springfield suspect’s home where they cut the heads off, police said. The two men then distributed the rabbit heads randomly along the route early Easter morning.

Three of the heads have since been discovered in Westfield, one by a mail carrier as he went to put mail in a mailbox on Pinehurst Street. Another of the heads was found in a mailbox a short distance away on Willis Street.

The location of the mailbox where the third head was found was not immediately available.

Police said two of the heads remain unaccounted for and could still be potentially awaiting discovery in mailboxes in Westfield, Southwick or Granville.